


There’s Nothing That’s New Anymore

by mirawonderfulstar



Category: Ferris Bueller's Day Off (1986)
Genre: Child Abuse, Domestic Violence, Guilt, Homophobic Language, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Physical Abuse, Running Away, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-26
Updated: 2020-06-26
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:15:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24926020
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mirawonderfulstar/pseuds/mirawonderfulstar
Summary: Cameron deals with the repercussions of destroying his dad’s car. Ferris saves the day.
Relationships: Ferris Bueller/Cameron Frye
Comments: 11
Kudos: 146





	There’s Nothing That’s New Anymore

**Author's Note:**

> ah yes, another “i wrote this at like 3am because i couldn’t sleep” fic.
> 
> title is from the song Boring by The Brobecks.

Cameron is in his room, shoulders wedged uncomfortably in between the slats of the headboard, watching a point of light travel across the wall. He’s stiff and sore from holding the position, tense, listening intently for the inevitable sounds downstairs that will signal his parents’ return from Decatur. The door to his bedroom is unlocked, and every once in a while the idea flits through his head that he ought to get up and rectify that, but it is fundamentally useless to do so and so he does not. His father had expressed his anger at Cameron locking himself in his room before and it will just be one more thing for him to pile on top of all the reasons he will be furious when he gets home and sees the car shattered on the forest floor below the garage. 

Now that Ferris and Sloane are gone Cameron is having a much harder time convincing himself that today will be the day he’ll stand up to his father, that today he’ll put his foot down. His father will come charging down the hall, fling open Cameron’s bedroom door, arm raised, and Cameron will catch him before the back of his hand makes impact. Will tell him that he isn’t going to take it any longer, not him, not his mother. Cameron will be going away to college in the fall and he knows if he doesn’t try something… if anything happens to his mother while he is away and he doesn’t even _try…_

Cameron closes his eyes and swallows. He’s starting to make himself sick again, thinking in circles until it makes the world spin and his stomach churn. He wishes the old man would just get home and get it over with, because he’s long since lost his nerve and resigned himself to the beating of a lifetime and he’s just desperate for it to be over so he can curl up in bed and sleep through the worst of the pain. He feels small and pathetic and afraid and as much as he wants to stand up, to say no, his resolve grows weaker with every moment he waits. 

After what feels like a lifetime, he hears the door connecting the garage to the house slam. Cameron’s heart is beating so hard he thinks it might fly out of his chest as his father’s voice drifts through the house. 

“—has another goddamn thing coming, we’re gone for _three days_ and he manages to wreck my car and destroy a wall of the garage—“

His mother’s soft murmur does nothing to pacify his father’s temper but at least Cameron can hear only the man snarling and not the telltale sound of flesh on flesh. With some effort Cameron manages to extract himself from the headboard and is standing with his arms crossed when his father throws open his bedroom door. 

“What the hell were you doing?” his father snarls, jabbing a finger into Cameron’s chest. “You know goddamn well you’re not to touch that car.” 

Cameron’s chest is tight with fear and he takes a miniscule step back, but his father grabs his arms with fingers that dig into the skin and holds him in place. “Answer me,” he growls, and Cameron tries to think of all his well-rehearsed speeches, what he had said to Ferris and Sloane earlier, but all that comes out of his mouth is a squeak. 

When his father slaps him it is with enough force to send him sprawling backwards through the room. “I did not raise you to act like this. You know I loved that car, you know you’re not meant to touch it, so get up. Tell me what the _fuck_ you thought you were doing when you managed to back _a half a million dollar car out a glass window_.” Cameron flinches as his father advances on him and grabs him by the throat. “I said GET UP!” 

“STOP IT!” Cameron finally manages as he claws at his father’s fingers. The grip he has on Cameron’s windpipe is not crushing but it will bruise nonetheless, along with his arms and his cheek. “Just stop it, okay? What do you want me to say? I’m sorry I wrecked your car.” 

His father throws him across the room and he lands against his desk which collapses under his weight, cascading schoolwork down over the floor. “Oh you’re _sorry_ , are you? Tell me what would possess you to even touch that Ferrari.” 

Cameron tries to stagger to his feet but his father kicks him and he falls again. “Was it Ferris Bueller? Did he come poking around here to help you ruin something I’ve put hundreds of thousands of dollars and hours upon hours of time into?” 

Cameron’s eyes are squeezed shut from the pain in his chest where his father’s expensive leather shoe had made contact with his ribs but he manages to open one enough to glare. “So what if it was? You love that car more than you love me or your wife, are you surprised I wanted to destroy it?” 

His father pulls him up by the hair and Cameron gasps anew at the pain, trying to ignore the way his whole body is screaming out in panic and terror. “You little faggot,” his father snarls, and Cameron can see nothing but how white his teeth are, his lips pulled back in an almost feral expression as he shakes Cameron by the hair. “Is that the best you can do?” He lets go of Cameron and raises his fists. “Stand up and fight back.” 

“No.” Cameron spits out. 

“You’re obviously raring to go, so why don’t you, eh? Not enough of a man to take a swing at me? Do you have to resort to destroying my property and sneaking around with another little queer?” 

Cameron knows his father is baiting him and he almost wishes he could rise to it, could strike back like he’d been privately fantasizing about since the car had crashed through the wall of the garage, but his father is taller even than him and has the advantage of a hundred pounds and years of experience bullying people on his side. He stays where he is, not looking at his father, going meek and apologetic like he’s seen his mother do, like _he’s_ done for years. He can’t win but he can wait, if he just waits it out it’ll be over. His father will leave him alone in his room, and he’ll go away to college in the fall, and he’ll never have to endure this kind of thing again, but his mother… He can’t help but fel responsible for whatever will happen to her, because he can’t stand up and give her husband what he wants by punching him right in the mouth.

“That’s what I thought,” his father sounds grimly satisfied, and Cameron risks a look up at him just in time to see the man spit on the floor in front of him. He heads out of the room, pausing by the door to take the keys to Cameron’s own car which, he realizes with horror, are hanging in their usual place on a hook by his closet, and not safe in his pocket. His father slams the door behind him and Cameron rolls over on the floor, aching and defeated and afraid. He presses his cheek into the cool hardwood and lets out a shuddering breath.   
  


Ferris is sprawled on his stomach in bed, listening to a cassette Sloane had lent him and swinging his feet above him when his phone rings. 

“Babe,” he says when he picks it up, because although Ferris Bueller may have many admirers, the only two people who would call him this late at night are his girlfriend and his partner-in-crime, neither of whom would mind the epithet. 

“Ferris?” Cameron’s voice is small and shaky, and Ferris sits up in bed and slaps the cassette player off without looking. 

“What’s wrong?” 

“I need you to get me out of here.” Cameron is barely speaking at all and Ferris has to press the phone to his ear to listen. “My dad came home and saw what happened to his car and I thought I could stand up to him but…” Ferris hears a gasp and imagines a wince to go along with it and he winces himself, picturing the look on Cameron’s face as he bends over in pain. 

“He _hurt you?_ ” Ferris all but yells, and rolls his eyes at the sound of Jeanie pounding a fist on their shared wall. “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I should have taken the heat for this, Cam, I—“

“Stop.” Cameron whispers, and Ferris falls silent. “Spare me and just. Just get me out of here. He took my car keys.” 

Ferris is already shimmying into the jeans he’d discarded on the floor earlier and running his free hand through his hair. “Of course, I’ll call Sloane, I’ll beg for a ride from Jeanie, hell, I’ll take my dad’s car if necessary. Hang on, I’ll be there soon.” 

“Thank you.” Cameron sounds almost too grateful and it makes Ferris’s stomach twist, as does the click that means he’s hung up. 

It is nearly 1am but that doesn’t deter Ferris from knocking lightly on his sister’s door. Not now. Not when his best friend is in trouble. 

Jeanie lends him her car with the caveat that if so much as her seat settings are different when she gets it back he’ll have hell to pay, but all Ferris can think of is the way Cameron had gasped and how sure he’d seemed earlier, how sure he had been that he’d be able to stand up to his father. He goes ten over the speed limit the whole way to the Frye house and then turns the lights off as he gets close, parking far enough away to avoid anyone inside hearing him. Then he creeps up to Cameron’s bedroom window, thanking mid-century modern architecture for its distaste for second stories as he goes. 

He raps lightly on the glass and it is open in an instant. The bottom of Ferris’s stomach drops out as he gets a look at Cameron in the meager light from his bedside lamp. 

A lurid bruise is forming on his cheek and his lip is split. His jacket is zipped all the way up to his chin but when he turns his head Ferris sees the mottling on his throat anyway. He is holding himself like the right side of his chest is painful to move. 

“ _Cam.”_ Ferris gasps out, and Cameron glares at him. 

“Shut up and take this.” He hands Ferris a duffel bag and slings a backpack over his shoulder. “Thank you for coming. I really don’t know if I can stay here any longer. I don’t know where I’ll go, but—“ 

“What?” Ferris’s eyes go wide of their own accord. “You’re not going to just— you’re staying with me.” 

“I’m sure your parents would love that.” Cameron says drily. 

“Why wouldn’t they? They love you, you know how much they always go on about what a good influence you are on me.” Cameron snorts at that. “I’m serious. You can stay with me, don't even think otherwise.” He backs away from the window to give Cameron space to shimmy out, watching the tender and sensitive way he moves and trying not to wince again. “You can tell them your dad kicked you out.” 

“That’ll work exactly as long as he doesn’t call your house to find out where I am.” Cameron sounds resigned. 

“And what’s he going to do about it?” Ferris is starting to get angry on Cameron’s behalf now as they walk carefully through the woods back to Jeanie’s car. “You look like shit, my parents wouldn’t let you go back knowing he did that to you.” 

Cameron is silent for a long time afterwards, silent as they drive back to the Bueller’s neighborhood, silent as they climb the trellis and make it back in through Ferris’s window and Ferris goes to return the keys to Jeanie with a whispered word of thanks. When he makes it back to his room Cameron is sitting on the floor under the window with his knees drawn up to his chin, leaning his crossed arms on them and looking down at his feet. Ferris throws himself back down onto his bed and watches him, unspeaking. 

“My father thinks I’m a queer,” Cameron says after a long pause. “I don’t know if that’s why he hates you, but…” 

The idea seems to take a long time to permeate Ferris’s brain. “Oh,” he finally says, and then, taking in the way Cameron is looking at him now, eyes wet and disconsolate in the dim light from over Ferris’s desk, “ _oh._ ” 

Cameron sniffs and Ferris looks away to give him time to wipe at his eyes, to dab at his lip which has started to bleed again. He gets off the bed and heads for the bathroom on the landing where he wrings a washcloth from under the sink in cold water and brings it back to his bedroom. When he sinks to the floor in front of Cameron he half expects to be pushed away, but Cameron merely looks at him, his eyes red-rimmed and puffy, as Ferris dabs at the corners of his eyes. He hisses out a breath when Ferris’s fingers probe over the bruise on his cheek.

They don’t talk as Ferris continues washing Cameron’s face, nor as he turns his back so his friend can change into the pajamas from his duffel bag. Ferris’s bed is small for two but it is clean and reasonably comfortable, Ferris having changed the sheets and pulled more pillows out of the closet in the hall in the course of enacting his grand charade the morning before. It seems a thousand years ago, suddenly, with Cameron crawling under the covers beside him and flinching away when Ferris’s hand brushes his side as he tucks them both in. 

“Where else did he hit you?” Ferris asks slowly, although he thinks he knows the answer going by the way Cameron has been favoring one side of his body all night. 

“Kicked,” Cameron says, his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallows back what Ferris knows is mortification.

Ferris swears under his breath. He wants to break something. He wants to hurt Mr. Frye so badly he can’t deny it to anyone. He wants to pull Cameron close and caress his cheek and promise him… something. Anything at all. He wants to make Cameron feel good. 

He does brush his fingers through Cameron’s hair, fingertips skimming across the spot where an ugly patch of purple and yellow mars otherwise clear skin, and his hand eventually settles on the back of Cameron’s neck. His friend has closed his eyes, leaning into the proffered comfort, and Ferris’s forehead rests against his as his own eyes close. 

“I’m sorry,” Ferris whispers, so soft that for a moment he isn’t sure he has really spoken at all, but the hum of acknowledgement from Cameron confirms he has. “Really, I am. This is my fault.” 

“No, I think this was always going to happen,” Cameron’s voice is so, so quiet, and the breath from his words plays across Ferris’s lips. “Sooner or later.” 

“You think?” Ferris is unsure, suddenly, whether they are talking about Cameron’s father, or the car, or the state of Cameron’s face, or the fact he is currently in Ferris’s bed, or some combination of all of it. 

“Mmm,” Cameron hums in confirmation, and then, a moment later, “go to sleep.” 

He drifts off a while later, but Ferris stays awake into the morning, one hand curled protectively around the back of Cameron’s neck, watching the play of light on his face in the slowly brightening room. 


End file.
